Abortion and reproductive health from a pro-choice, Canadian perspective

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Fredelle Bruser Maynard on abortion

In her book, The Tree of Life, Fredelle Bruser Manyard tells of one incident from her time in New England in the mid-1970s. She speaks of a former student who had married and become an outstanding teacher (Mrs Crillis):

"Of her death I know only what I have read. On that last night, a local physican enlisted by the university's radical group telephoned two different hospitals. Would they admit a woman who had had a "miscarriage" and was haemorrhaging badly? The answer both times was No. It seems that hospitals... have to be very careful. So Mary Ellen was dispatched by ambulance to a hospital sixty miles away. State troopers questioned her as she lay bleeding to death.Who did it? and — how thorough the law is — Who was the father?

A very small funeral was held in a very large new church.... I thought the pallbearers... must all be boys from the high school. But someone told me, later, one was Mary Ellen's husband."